This lift debuted in 2022 as the first MND Group detachable lift in the United States or Canada.The bottom terminal houses both the drive and tensioning along with a parking facility.View riding up the middle part of the line.Ropeway equipment designed in partnership with Bartholet.The old lift had 25 towers while the new has only 13 which are taller and further apart.View riding up.Nearing the summit.Upper lift line.View down the line.A support tower.View down the line near tower 7.View up the middle part of the line.Lower lift line.The alignment is very dynamic with steep and low angle sections.Lower station with parking adjacent.Bartholet designed drive terminal.Contour loading.Inside the parking barn.Tower head.Drive terminal equipment.A grip in the station.The terminal is not only long but also very wide.John Deere evacuation engine.Tower 1 adjacent to the bottom terminal.View riding out of the base area.Six passenger bubble chair.Tower 13.Unloading area.Compact return terminal with exposed bullwheel.Side view of the return station.Downhill end of the top station.View from tower 12.Back of a bubble chair.View down toward Snow’s Mountain.Looking up from the base area.A Bartholet chair.Lower section of the line.The top terminal seen from sister MND lift High Country.
He has his sources and is somewhat well known. He’s also a lift mech himself. Even I was able to get a tour of the Vault drive room of the Needles Gondola at Snowbasin, along with inside the upper terminal a number of years back when I made friends with a few of the lifties and a former Lift Mech supervisor. They are awesome people and were very happy to talk shop with me and show me everything they could.
Sheet metal, and just the way it’s formed and assembled. You see the same thing on roofing except reversed- the formed ridges are on the outside rather than the inside.
I find it funny that the tower numbers are formatted as 008, 009, 010, 011, etc. Like it’s common for them to build a ski lift with more than 99 towers so they label towers on every lift with 3 digits.
Interesting carrier design with the top of the bail above the lowest point of the hanger arm. It looks like you ride way closer to the haul rope than you would on most detachables, especially recent Leitner Poma lifts. The bail itself is interesting too, it’s not just a single round tube with multiple bends like on most carriers we see
The competition terminals at MSM were an exclusively North American product. France had a similar terminal, but the shell of the terminal itself did not share any parts with the competition terminals built in North America
Samson built a high-speed double at Mont-Sainte-Anne, QC, Carlevaro & Savio built detachable bubble doubles at Beech Mountain, NC, and Mt. Snow, VT, and Mohawk built at least two detachables (for example, the world’s first HSQ – a side-seat) in Western New York.
There was also a company named Mohawk who made the first detachable lift in America at Val Bialas in New York. It must have not worked well though, as it was replaced only 5 years after it was built. https://skiinghistory.org/news/first-flopped
Muni, Leitner has made detaches here too. Additionally, Ringer created a detachable double on the Pacific coast. Mohawk, a little-known manufacturer in New York, built the world’s first HSQ (side-seat!) and at least one other detach, while the Quebecois manufacturer Samson made one at Mont-Sainte-Anne. Speaking of Mont-Sainte-Anne, one of a few Mueller gondolas (I know that you said chairlifts, however, these are also detachable, if this helps) was built there. One can see Mueller gondolas at Pipestem, WV and at the abandoned Mt. Whittier, NH. PHB-Hall has made quite a few as well.
Anyone else wondering why there are no automatic opening/closing rails for the bubbles, or if there are they aren’t in use? I’ve heard people complaining about wind holds on this lift and the previous one and having the downhill side bubbles open the whole time probably doesn’t help with wind resistance.
Lift looks nice, but the incident with the terminal covers being blown off a couple weeks into operations, is pretty questionable design on MND’s part, I understand it was windy, but Mont Ste Marie’s two 1989 Poma Competition High speed quads, both with pancake design non covered upper tension terminals, have never had a single one of the terminal covers blown off, and the winds at the top of Cheval Blanc can get pretty brutal. Not sure if that’s Poma over engineering, or MND under engineering, but still a rough look for MND. Heres a video of them in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6GqP43bAE&ab_channel=SlopeEdge
To be fair, after looking at it closer, the panels on this lift are a lot larger than the ones on Cheval Blanc and Vanier express, and look a lot easier to blow off, so wasnt exactly the fairest of comparisons. My bad
In my opinion, this is the best looking new bubble chair this year. It’s relatively unobtrusive and doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I like the compact return terminal.
Rode the lift for the first time today. It’s a nice lift, but I’m not sure why the mechanism to lower the return bubbles isn’t there from the launch? The chair did stop often today, and sometime running at half speed for extended periods. The running joke on the lift was whether we would make it up without stopping. When it is running at full speed, it does get people up the hill quick. I hope they get the bugs worked out soon.
I have to say these seem like the best looking detachable terminals on the market in the US. I would hope more resorts start buying them as I am not a big fan of the competition.
From what I found the lift design here is actually from the manufacture Bartholet which merged with LST in 2020 to form MND. It seems like they have been improving and making this design since the mid 2000s.
Bartholet didn’t merge with LST, MND had contract that allowed them to use the bartholet design, Bartholet is now part of HTI (leitner, Poma etc.). MND had owned LST along with their other assets for some time. This lift is in fact a Bartholet design with parts built in the LST plant.
WV tried to run this lift in the wind today. Only a few minutes after opening with the lift running at a slow crawl, an unoccupied chair struck the catwalk on tower 8 and the chair was stuck in the sheaves. After maybe 15 minutes they backed the lift up like a foot or two, off loaded everyone via limp mode and took the carriers off line for the night.
Does anyone know why almost half of the bubbles on this lift are cracked/damaged? I was there for the first time this weekend and was surprised to see this nearly brand-new lift with cracks. Otherwise, nice lift and I like the suspension on the chairs.
Anyone know what is wrong with this lift? Was riding it today and it constantly stops, and once it stops it would tend to stop multiple times as soon as it starts up. Very unlikely it’s miss loads as there were maybe 30 people on the entire mountain. To make the ride more frustrating it seems to be running on some medium speed the entire time as well. Plus it opened late.
Lift Blog 
Stunning machine. Engineering improvements over the years must be at least partly reasonable for halving the number of towers needed.
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How does peter get inside the motor room?
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He has his sources and is somewhat well known. He’s also a lift mech himself. Even I was able to get a tour of the Vault drive room of the Needles Gondola at Snowbasin, along with inside the upper terminal a number of years back when I made friends with a few of the lifties and a former Lift Mech supervisor. They are awesome people and were very happy to talk shop with me and show me everything they could.
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Look at that line sag. Wow!
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Chair 1 @ Sandia Peak once had it in between towers 17 and 18 but is now partially removed.
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I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary, just standard perspective differences from photo spots.
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The drive terminal underskin looks like its counterpart on Kanc8’s top terminal. Does anyone think that this is a coincidence?
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Yes, it is. Only so many ways to skin a cat, as they say.
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Do you know what it is made of and what causes the gridlike pattern where sheets meet to be so visible?
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Sheet metal, and just the way it’s formed and assembled. You see the same thing on roofing except reversed- the formed ridges are on the outside rather than the inside.
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Thanks!
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Looks great. I wonder if Yan was still around, their lifts would look like this. How comfy were the seats, Peter?
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I find it funny that the tower numbers are formatted as 008, 009, 010, 011, etc. Like it’s common for them to build a ski lift with more than 99 towers so they label towers on every lift with 3 digits.
Interesting carrier design with the top of the bail above the lowest point of the hanger arm. It looks like you ride way closer to the haul rope than you would on most detachables, especially recent Leitner Poma lifts. The bail itself is interesting too, it’s not just a single round tube with multiple bends like on most carriers we see
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The minimalistic design of the upper terminal reminds me of the minimalistic return stations on some UNIs.
As well as the return stations on Leitner detachables:
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Hear, hear!
Vanier and Cheval Blanc at Mont Sainte-Marie fit this, too:
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I think in europe Doppelmayr also makes them
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The competition terminals at MSM were an exclusively North American product. France had a similar terminal, but the shell of the terminal itself did not share any parts with the competition terminals built in North America
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No, I mean a Doppelmayr style of the MND return terminal. It is on the world’s first 8-seater’s return (UNI) and some more modern ones
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The lower terminal looks slick (and vaguely reminiscent of D-Line), not a fan of the upper terminal.
So, are these all the companies that have ever built a detach chairlift in North America?
– Doppelmayr
– CTEC, later Garaventa/CTEC (did Garaventa ever build their own?)
– Poma
– Leitner
– Yan (RIP)
– now MND/Bartholet
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Actually, it looks like VonRoll built Gore’s high-speed triple (the Adirondack Express).
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VonRoll also built the Eagle Express at Solitude.
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Borvig build a lift with Leitner as a one-off:
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tsd4-spirit-express-borvig-leitner-9118.html
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Samson built a high-speed double at Mont-Sainte-Anne, QC, Carlevaro & Savio built detachable bubble doubles at Beech Mountain, NC, and Mt. Snow, VT, and Mohawk built at least two detachables (for example, the world’s first HSQ – a side-seat) in Western New York.
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Garaventa built the Funitel at Palisades Tahoe.
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There was also a company named Mohawk who made the first detachable lift in America at Val Bialas in New York. It must have not worked well though, as it was replaced only 5 years after it was built.
https://skiinghistory.org/news/first-flopped
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Hall lifts also built some with Von Roll.
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Muni, Leitner has made detaches here too. Additionally, Ringer created a detachable double on the Pacific coast. Mohawk, a little-known manufacturer in New York, built the world’s first HSQ (side-seat!) and at least one other detach, while the Quebecois manufacturer Samson made one at Mont-Sainte-Anne. Speaking of Mont-Sainte-Anne, one of a few Mueller gondolas (I know that you said chairlifts, however, these are also detachable, if this helps) was built there. One can see Mueller gondolas at Pipestem, WV and at the abandoned Mt. Whittier, NH. PHB-Hall has made quite a few as well.
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That detachable that Mohawk built ran at fixed grip speed and chairs had to be moved by a lifty. Mohawk also built a double at Alpine valley WI.
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GMD Mueller also built detachable gondolas. I don’t know it they’ve built detachables.
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Side-seat!
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/liste-6-59-gmd-muller.html
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Ringer built a detachable double at bear valley:
http://www.skilifts.org/old/chairlift_manufacturers_ringer.htm
Bell and PHB made some detachable gondolas, but no chairlifts.
Sidenote, Mueller built the first ever detachable chairlift in Ireland, which is pretty cool:
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Garaventa built a lot of HSQ in Europe
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tsd4-geils-luegli-garaventa-2045.html
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tsd4-hornli-express-garaventa-4539.html
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It appears Garaventa built 2 gondolas in Vancouver in 1985, both were removed after (probably scrapped).
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I think they were relocated to europe after the world fair.
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Anyone else wondering why there are no automatic opening/closing rails for the bubbles, or if there are they aren’t in use? I’ve heard people complaining about wind holds on this lift and the previous one and having the downhill side bubbles open the whole time probably doesn’t help with wind resistance.
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The current situation is temporary. The bubbles have cables for automatic lowering and the sensors are in place. Soon.
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Lift looks nice, but the incident with the terminal covers being blown off a couple weeks into operations, is pretty questionable design on MND’s part, I understand it was windy, but Mont Ste Marie’s two 1989 Poma Competition High speed quads, both with pancake design non covered upper tension terminals, have never had a single one of the terminal covers blown off, and the winds at the top of Cheval Blanc can get pretty brutal. Not sure if that’s Poma over engineering, or MND under engineering, but still a rough look for MND. Heres a video of them in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6GqP43bAE&ab_channel=SlopeEdge
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To be fair, after looking at it closer, the panels on this lift are a lot larger than the ones on Cheval Blanc and Vanier express, and look a lot easier to blow off, so wasnt exactly the fairest of comparisons. My bad
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The drives on Cheval Blanc and Vanier look somewhat like White Peaks Express’s .
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Because they are the same system, just different covers.
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In my opinion, this is the best looking new bubble chair this year. It’s relatively unobtrusive and doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I like the compact return terminal.
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Looks like that on Bethlehem Express at Bretton Woods, NH.
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Yes, I believe that was the standard return terminal for Doppelmay Unis. Yan also had similar compact terminals.
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Why on earth did they replace a top drive lift with a bottom drive lift!?
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Powerlines and $$.
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Wow… Those are some of the prettiest terminals I’ve seen in a long time. I’m a BIG fan of UNI-G, and these feel like a more refined version of that.
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The return looks like a modernized UNI, while the drive looks like a cross between a UNI-G and a D-Line.
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The return reminds me of the compact Leitner returns like Northstar Express at Kimberly.
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Rode the lift for the first time today. It’s a nice lift, but I’m not sure why the mechanism to lower the return bubbles isn’t there from the launch? The chair did stop often today, and sometime running at half speed for extended periods. The running joke on the lift was whether we would make it up without stopping. When it is running at full speed, it does get people up the hill quick. I hope they get the bugs worked out soon.
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Peter has already commented that the current situation re: the bubbles is temporary.
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I have to say these seem like the best looking detachable terminals on the market in the US. I would hope more resorts start buying them as I am not a big fan of the competition.
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From what I found the lift design here is actually from the manufacture Bartholet which merged with LST in 2020 to form MND. It seems like they have been improving and making this design since the mid 2000s.
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Bartholet didn’t merge with LST, MND had contract that allowed them to use the bartholet design, Bartholet is now part of HTI (leitner, Poma etc.). MND had owned LST along with their other assets for some time. This lift is in fact a Bartholet design with parts built in the LST plant.
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what is and evac engine ?
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That’s how we run the lift when the power goes out, or if there’s a problem with the electric motor or drive such that the lift won’t run with them.
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To piggyback off of pbropetech’s comment, ‘evac engine’ is short for ‘evacuation engine’.
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WV tried to run this lift in the wind today. Only a few minutes after opening with the lift running at a slow crawl, an unoccupied chair struck the catwalk on tower 8 and the chair was stuck in the sheaves. After maybe 15 minutes they backed the lift up like a foot or two, off loaded everyone via limp mode and took the carriers off line for the night.
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Does anyone know why almost half of the bubbles on this lift are cracked/damaged? I was there for the first time this weekend and was surprised to see this nearly brand-new lift with cracks. Otherwise, nice lift and I like the suspension on the chairs.
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I don’t know for certain, but perhaps thinner/cheaper plastic.
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According to Peter, they will be replacing the bubbles.
https://liftblog.com/2025/03/13/waterville-valley-to-build-new-t-bar/
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Anyone know what is wrong with this lift? Was riding it today and it constantly stops, and once it stops it would tend to stop multiple times as soon as it starts up. Very unlikely it’s miss loads as there were maybe 30 people on the entire mountain. To make the ride more frustrating it seems to be running on some medium speed the entire time as well. Plus it opened late.
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